1772 Book(s) Related to charlie wilson i still have you

On our wedding day, my fiancé, Preston Vale, didn't come to walk me down the aisle. Instead, he brought Silas Rowan—the "unstable" son of his family's former driver.
"Walk through the ceremony with him," Preston demanded, wrapping his arm around his secretary, Lydia. "Consider it your apology for upsetting her."
Lydia smiled with practiced delicacy. "It's just a little joke, Maren. Don't be so dramatic. I'll be keeping Mr. Vale company today."
Preston looked down at me with arrogant certainty. "It's a prank. Why are you getting so hysterical?"
Seeing the smugness in his eyes, the love I had protected for five years finally shattered. I calmly turned to the quiet man standing in the borrowed suit.
"He came dressed as a groom to take his bride. How is this a game?" I stepped away from Preston and held my hand out to the supposed lunatic. "If we are going to do this, we make it real. Silas, will you marry me?"

They left me to freeze to death in our basement freezer.

The night before prom, my foster sister Leila came crying that I'd burned her Ivy League recommendation letter. My birth parents didn't even listen to one word of explanation—they threw me into that frozen hell in forty-five below.

I beat on that door until my fingers were shredded, screamed until my throat tore apart, but all I could hear from upstairs was their laughter celebrating Leila. Even Justin—the boy I'd loved since we were kids—texted calling me a fucking psycho.

As I drew my last breath, I heard Leila's soft voice outside the door: "Rest in peace, sister."

Now I'm a ghost, watching them lose their minds when the truth comes out.

My parents and twin sister faked their own deaths so she could steal my college acceptance.

I believed it. Sobbed until I couldn't breathe when the cops showed me photos of the burnt yacht. Thought my words—"I hope you all die"—had somehow made it happen.

Two weeks later, I found my sister's backup Instagram: "Finally ditched the boring sister! Bahamas is paradise 🏖"

Something inside me snapped.

Wanna play dead? Stay dead.

I took their death certificates. Canceled their social security numbers. Drained every joint account—every last cent. Sold the house to John, the kind of guy even cops don't mess with.

One month later, they came home tanned and loaded with designer bags, expecting to find me broken on the streets.

What greeted them instead were cold gun barrels pointed at their heads.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

I was marrying Boone Ashcroft on a Saturday morning. Before I could step out of the truck, his mother walked up with a rope and pointed at the cattle chute behind the barn.
Her terms: hands and knees through six inches of mud and manure. A metal headgate clamped around my neck at the end. That was the price of walking through her front door.
I said no.
Then forty Ashcrofts surrounded the truck. My phone had zero signal. My family was blocked behind a hay baler a quarter mile back. And the man I'd spent three years with looked me in the eye and said: "You're going through that chute today. Crawling or walking — pick one."
They cornered my best friend. Threw hog blood on the windshield. Thought nobody was coming for me.
They didn't know about the CB radio under the console — or the ten cousins listening on the other end.

Ten years ago, my mate faked his death in the war and ran off with his childhood sweetheart.
No goodbye. No contact since.
All he left me were two things — a debt of six hundred and eighty thousand, and a notice declaring him lost, stamped four years later by people who'd never met him.
The bank took our den. I moved into a shared burrow-flat at the edge of the settlement.
Three jobs after hours. Sold blood. Scrubbed latrines. Tested tonics for the healers until my nose stopped working right.
Ten years to pay off the debt. A desk at the Missing and Fallen Registry Office, once the ceasefire finally came.
My first case file was a man the law had already declared dead.
He said he'd been young and reckless. Walked out. Never looked back.
Now his family's land was due a war reparations payout, and he needed his name restored to collect it.
I stared at the name on the form. Recognized it instantly.
Smiled.
"Insufficient documentation. Application denied."

In order to rush to comfort his assistant whose apartment was leaking, Richard signed his name hastily without even glancing at the documents on the table.
I put away the divorce agreement with a wry smile.
When he and my son completely disappeared, he finally panicked.
Three months later .
He knelt down on the streets of Chicago in despair, begging me to remarry him.
My six-year-old son looked coldly at his biological father and said, "Get lost, you bad uncle! You don't deserve to be my dad!"

My uncle has a hunting cabin in Alaska. Every December, I stay there for a few days.

This year he wasn't there—left me the keys.

When I walked in, I noticed there was a new deer head mount above the fireplace.

Not a whitetail deer. A moose. Very large.

But I noticed its eyes weren't made of glass.

Those two eyeballs looked... too real.

The pupils even contracted in the light.

I texted my uncle asking when he'd shot this moose.

He replied: "What moose?"

I looked at the mount again.

Its lips moved slightly.

Not the rise and fall of breathing, but... trying to form a word.

When the world fell to monsters, Avery was just a girl with nothing but a name.

Now she's hunted by ancient Titans—creatures from myth that should never have been real—and saved by three deadly brothers bound in blood, magic, and secrets. Damien is cold and cruel, convinced she’s hiding something. Ezra is her reluctant protector, willing to defy his own blood for her. And Rowan… wears a muzzle for a reason.

They say she’s marked. Chosen. That the Titans want her for what she is, or what she’s becoming.

She says she just wants to go home.

But love in the ruins is dangerous, and Avery is about to learn:
you don’t survive the end of the world without breaking—or being claimed.

"Aveline Ashkaar." Rhaedon's voice was low as his golden eyes held mine. "The moment you offered yourself to become my Luna, everything about you became mine. Your life, your obedience, your blood... including the abilities that flow through it."

He paused, his gaze never leaving mine.

"And I don't share what's mine."

☆

I died on my son's death anniversary, betrayed by the man I'd devoted my entire life to, and the woman who stood by, smiling as I took my last breath… was my very own sister.

When I opened my eyes again, I was five years in the past—before the betrayal, before my death and before the beginning of it all.

This time, I refused to marry the man who destroyed me.

Instead, I walked straight into the arms of the only man the entire Empire feared—Crown Prince Alpha Rhaedon Ashkaar.

Rhaedon was everything Lucien wasn't.

Dangerous. Competent. Powerful.

And the perfect weapon for my revenge.

He wanted the throne. I wanted vengeance.

It should have been the perfect alliance, but revenge was never that simple.

With every step I took toward my revenge, another secret from my first life came to light. The deeper I dug, the more I realized I wasn't the only one playing this game.

And by the time I uncovered the truth...

Walking away from Rhaedon Ashkaar was no longer an option.

"Before we start, I put a sleeping pill in the wife's milk,No matter how loud we get tonight, she won't wake up."

The mistress whispered with a cruel smile.

Nora Hearst lay hidden beneath the bed, listening to the ragged breathing of her husband and her so-called best friend on their marital bed.

They even found her wheelchair too much of an obstacle, casually dragging her fragile body onto the freezing floor.

The man who had pursued her for four years

a man who once claimed he would die for her——was now whispering to that woman:

"Nora can't satisfy me, but you... you're wild enough."

Her hand tightened around the voice recorder hidden in her sleeve.

Memories flooded back: the car accident where she sacrificed her legs to save his life, and the precious surprise growing inside her womb that he had been so eagerly awaiting.

Kennedy Frederick , she vowed silently, in sixty-six days, I will make you kneel and listen to every second of this recording.

I will destroy you at the very moment you think your life is perfect.

I almost died giving birth to my daughter. The doctors gave me a thirty percent chance of survival — and I took it, because I thought a child might finally make my husband choose home over her.

I was wrong.

I stood in the hallway and listened to Kael tell his mother that I was "more resilient" — that the risks of childbirth were too serious for the woman he truly loved, so it had to be me. I was not his wife. I was a vessel.

Then my daughter, the child I had bled for, looked me in the eyes and said she wished Ivy were her mother instead.

That was the night I stopped waiting.

I filed for divorce. I walked out. I reclaimed the research career I had abandoned for a man who never saw me. And I told myself I was done.

What I didn't expect was the little boy I pulled back from the edge of suffocation — a child with no parents, a face I couldn't stop feeling I recognized, and a medical robot I had designed with my own hands tucked inside his coat.

Who is he? And why does finding him feel like the beginning of something I'm not ready for?

I watched my boyfriend down on one knee proposing to another woman.
Turns out that he was cheating on me with her for two years.
Our five years together meant nothing to him. He claimed that he needed her money –connections and that I should be the one to play the role of a mistress. I refused.
I didn’t stick around. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I wanted something strong to numb my pain— and yes, I ended up in the loudest club.
Then I met him, Adrian Foster. The wealthiest and powerful CEO.
The moment I lost my balance, he caught me and pulled me straight in to his chest.
Fate? I didn’t believe in it.
But may be …. He did.

The night they came for my sister, I cut my own palm and offered the Devil a better bride.

I did it in front of the whole city. I thought I was just a substitute, a disposable girl thrown into the fog to save the sister I loved. But when the Devil appeared—tall, dressed in black that drank the light, with eyes like pale, cold coins—everything changed.

He didn't kill me. He reached out and closed his freezing hand around my bleeding wrist. That was when he saw it. The old silver mark I had carried since birth, hidden under my skin. The moment his thumb pressed against it, the mark woke, blooming with blinding silver light. His stillness wasn't that of a monster choosing his next meal. It was the shock of a man who had just found the one thing he prayed never to see.

"You are not the one they chose," he said, his voice carrying into every frozen corner of the square. The cold rushed out of the air. He turned my hand toward the dying light, his face cracking open to reveal something far worse than cruelty.

"You were never meant to be mine," he whispered softly, his grip tightening like a vise. "And now I cannot give you back."

I was reborn one year before my husband fell in love with another woman. This time, I successfully took her place and became the idealized figure, the one admired and longed for by my husband and her other suitors.

Six years ago, Evelyn White caught her husband Arthur Collins cheating, then left his mansion—pregnant and unseen. Now she’s back as Eve, a top artist, with two genius twins. At her exhibition, the kids yell “Mommy”… and Arthur’s world breaks. He’s obsessed with dragging her (and the kids he never knew) back. She just wants to paint and protect her family. But as their past’s lies unravel, escaping him means fighting for more than just freedom.

They thought he was dead.

They were wrong.

After years of war, bloodshed, and survival, Ares McKay returns to Chicago only to find his sister buried in the ground.

The people responsible are untouchable.

Political dynasties.

Billionaire families.

Criminal empires hidden behind luxury and power.

But Ares has spent five years becoming something far more dangerous than they could imagine.

One wedding turns into a massacre.

One city is pushed to the edge of chaos.

And one man begins a campaign of vengeance that will shake the foundations of every powerful family in Chicago.

Because when they murdered his sister...

They declared war on the wrong man.

When Leo Ross came home, his daughter was dying.

His wife was gone.

And every door to the truth was guarded by armed men.

Most people would call the police.

Leo declared war.

A former Delta Force legend, Leo tears through gangs, mercenaries, and criminal empires in a desperate race to save his family.

But the deeper he digs, the darker the truth becomes.

Someone has been planning this for years.

Someone powerful.

Someone who wants him dead.

They stole his wife.

Now he's coming for everything they own.

Bryson POV
Blackridge University was already a nightmare before I dumped hot coffee all over Julian Hayes.
He's tall, built, with this perfect smirk that makes me want to punch him. Captain of the hockey team and the biggest asshole I've ever met.
He destroyed me in front of everyone. Made sure I knew exactly where I stood.
But then I joined the hockey team to make my mom happy, and suddenly everything changed. I could actually play. And Julian? He started looking at me like he wanted to destroy me in a whole different way.
Now every practice feels like war. Every time we're alone in the locker room, I can barely breathe.
I hate him.
I want him.
And I'm pretty sure he knows it.

Julian's POV
I run Blackridge University. Team captain, golden boy, everyone wants to be me or be with me. Then some transfer kid crashes into me and ruins my shirt.
Bryson Miller.
Smart mouth, cheap clothes, and eyes that look at me like he's not impressed.
I should've crushed him and moved on. But the little shit joined my hockey team and turned out to be good. Really good.
Now I can't get him out of my head. Every practice, every fight we have feels like something else entirely. Something I don't want to think about.
I thought that was complicated enough.
Then I walk into my house tonight and find Bryson unpacking boxes in my living room..

There had been a prophecy told
for generations. It was common knowledge among all supernatural beings, whether they were good or evil. This prophecy was also known among the gods, titans, and demigods.
A runt wolf would meet her beloved and start one of the worst wars the supernatural world would ever see. The runt wolf would need to do everything she could to defeat the titan, Atlas.
Will she be able to overcome the challenges and defeat Atlas?
Or will Atlas win and bring the gods to their knees, ruling over the world as he had desperately wanted to do for eons?

Shantel Leaster is twenty-five and, to put it simply, a mess. She’s clumsy, spoiled, and never on time. Her parents, tired of her careless ways, cut her off and force her to survive on her own. After hopping from one failed job to another, Shantel finds herself desperate, with nothing but her small car, a pile of rejection letters, and a growing sense that life is passing her by.

That’s when she crosses paths with Kelvin Zee. He is everything she’s not: disciplined, powerful, respected, and blind. At first, Shantel doesn’t know how to feel about him. He’s cold and intimidating, but there’s something magnetic about him, something that makes her want to stay. Kelvin offers her a job as his personal chef, and though she doubts herself, she takes it.

“You don’t know Adrian Kane,” the message read.

“And if you stay married to him… you might not survive long enough to find out. You haven't seen the worst of him yet.”

Sold into a marriage with the powerful and mysterious billionaire Adrian Kane to save her family's failing wealth, Evelyn is left to handle being a nobody at home and a decorative wife in public.

Behind Adrian façade, lies a darkness no one dares question… and secrets capable of destroying far more than Evelyn’s fragile freedom.

Just as she begins to accept her fate, the past she never truly let go of returns...her first love. The man who once promised her a future now stands before her again, offering the life she thought she had lost forever.

Caught between the dangerous husband she barely understands and the love she never stopped feeling, Evelyn is forced to choose.
But as Adrian’s secrets begin to surface, one terrifying truth becomes impossible to ignore...

Did she marry a billionaire…

or a criminal wearing his mask?

And when the truth finally comes out, will Evelyn stay with the man she married…

or run back to the man she once loved?

Adam Blake travelled into the future over two thousand years later in the era of great interstellar development and became a small, down-on-his-luck lord of a planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. He activated the pirate system, and from then on became a pirate lord who made people scared. A certain Baron, ‘What! That madman came to my territory and looted the natural ingredients again!' A certain Viscount, ‘Bastard!...

Sophie Bennett is a ghost. A scholarship student at Crestview Academy, her only goal is to stay invisible and get close to Daniel Vale, the golden heir her family desperately needs her to befriend. Daniel is perfect, kind, and safe. But on her first day, a wrong turn puts her in the path of the "Wrong Brother."

Harrison Vale is the school’s shadow. He’s dangerous, silent, and feared. While the world sees Daniel’s light, Sophie is inexplicably drawn to Harrison’s darkness. As Serena Cole and the elite "Royals" of the school target Sophie for her low-income roots, Sophie finds herself caught between two brothers: the one who can save her future, and the one who might destroy her heart.

Lu Chen was supposed to die.
The empire remembers him as the cruel noble destined for execution. But now, a struggling writer has awakened in his body and the rules have changed.
[Sin System Activated.]
To survive, Lu Chen must feed on the envy, greed, lust, wrath, pride, sloth, and gluttony of those around him. Every sinful desire they feel fuels his power. But if he dares to be good… the system punishes him.
Now, Lu Chen doesn’t just play the villain he reinvents it. He manipulates, deceives, and dominates, turning the empire into a web of ambition and fear. Allies, enemies, even the heroine no one is safe from his calculated games.
Power is addictive, but Lucian is learning a terrifying truth: the system didn’t choose him to survive. It chose him to become the ultimate monster.
How far will he go when the villain refuses to die?

[From the Cold Blooded series]

In the city where shadows trade secrets and blood seals deals, Noah Bellion is a name whispered like a warning. They call him the Devil from Nowhere—a man of charm as sharp as the knife he hides beneath his tailored suit, a strategist who bleeds without flinching and smiles like sin itself.

Elodie, a quiet florist girl with secrets of her own, steps into his world searching for her missing brother. But Noah sees more than her desperation—he sees what she’s hiding. Something dangerous. Something he wants.

Their attraction is undeniable, but so is the quiet war between them—desire twisted with mistrust, fear tangled with fascination. Because Noah isn’t just the man who could save her. He’s also the man who could ruin her—and make her love him for it.

“You're afraid of me, Elodie… but not enough to stay away.”

"No, I still want to run. I'm afraid of you."

"Good. Fear means you know exactly what I can do to you."

I loved Callum Crane for five years. He said I didn't fit. Then he proposed — to my sister.
The same night, his brother called me with the most insane idea I've ever heard: marry him instead. Same day. Same venue. Right across the hall from my ex and my sister's ceremony.
I said yes. Not because I loved Emrys Crane. Because I'd rather set the whole thing on fire than sit in a pew and watch.
Here's the thing about revenge marriages, though. They're supposed to be fake.
Nobody told Emrys.
The man had a wrench set in his truck that only fit my grandmother's machine — bought years before I ever spoke to him. He'd been sneaking looks through my workshop window so often the stone wore down. He fixed my motorcycle three times and never mentioned it. He remembered that I stared at a piece of almond brittle for ten seconds once, and bought it for me weeks later.
Seven years. He'd been in love with me for seven years. Said nothing. Did everything.
And Callum? The man who told me I didn't fit?
He showed up at my orchard with an apology and a folder full of evidence against my sister, begging for a second chance.
I looked him in the eye and said: "Too late. Wrong harvest."
He tried five more times. It only got worse for him.

My three-year-old daughter Elsie called her father Dorian while I lay dying on the floor beside our bed.
"Daddy, the bad magic hurt Mommy. Please come home."
"If she wants to die, let her." He called us liars, then went back to cut the birthday cake for Selene—his foster sister and first love.
What he did not know was that the curse that killed me that night had been meant for him.
Now I can only watch. My little girl tucks coats around my body to keep me warm. Her father walks past our bedroom door again and again, certain I'm just sulking, because the woman he chose told him so.
By the time Dorian finally opens that door, there is nothing left to save.
He will learn the truth. He will beg.

They put the calm ones on graveyard. I'm calmer than calm - I can't read a face to save my life, but give me a voice and I'll tell you what you ate for dinner and what you're lying about.

3:07 a.m. A woman calls. A struggle. The line dies.

By sunrise there's no body, no report, and the call I logged has wiped itself clean - like it never rang. The whole city is asleep on it.

But I've never trusted the system. I keep my own copy of every call.

He erased her. I kept the tape. Now he just has to find out the night guy nobody looks at has been listening the whole time.

For six years I kept the books nobody wanted to touch.
They called me the help. My husband signed my name to a loan I never saw. His mother told the whole family I was the reason there were no grandchildren.
At the anniversary gala, they planned to retire me quietly — and hand my desk to the woman my husband had been paying out of company accounts.
They forgot one thing.
Before I married into this family, I spent six years catching men who move money the way they do. I never stopped keeping a second set of books.
I let them think the game was already over.
It was — for them.

Ten years into my assignment with the Unforgettable Love System, all my progress fell apart.

The original novel's heroine had been around for just three months.

The brooding boy I'd grown up with—the one I'd spent ten years winning over—put on a sunny, easygoing act for her and left me behind.

My fiancé's affection had only reached 80 percent after years of checking on him and taking care of him. One look at her, and he reset me to zero.

Even my own brother, who'd always treated me like the most precious person in his life, stopped being gentle and told me to grow up.

With my entire assignment about to go under, I decided on one last gamble.

There was a rule in novels: the woman nobody could forget always went abroad and stayed away for years.

Fine. Time to test the theory.

I packed that night and booked a flight out of the country.

Ten years ago, Heaven's War God Kevin fought an earth-shattering battle against the Demon King. Kevin was ambushed and gravely wounded, falling from Heaven to the mortal realm.

A young girl named Alice found the blood-soaked Kevin by the river while gathering herbs and treated him with medicinal plants.

Moved by her kindness, Kevin decided to stay in the mortal world to repay her debt, but he discovered that using his power would attract the Demon King and bring destruction to the human realm.

Kevin voluntarily sealed ninety-nine percent of his power and stayed by Alice's side, helping her gather herbs and heal people.

Two years later, Kevin confessed his love to Alice and they became husband and wife, opening a clinic in a small town where they saved countless lives and were known as the "Holy Couple."

"I'm six weeks pregnant with Asher's baby," my husband's mistress texted me, attaching a photo of a torn condom wrapper on my husband’s desk.
"If he really loved you, what am I?"
I just called a secret number.
"Are you sure you want to activate the Ghost Protocol?" my brother asked over the encrypted line.
"Once done, your identity is erased. You will cease to exist."
"Do it," I replied coldly.
My billionaire husband thinks he can keep his perfect marriage and his wild mistress.
He has no idea that his gentle, low-profile wife is actually the most dangerous princess of the New York Mafia.
I gave him a 15-day countdown.
On the final day, he opened his "anniversary gift"—only to find his cheating evidence and a house completely emptied of my existence.
He tore the city apart looking for me, going insane.
But how do you find a woman who never legally existed?

Ten minutes before our mating ceremony, Kael and I came across a video posted by his first love.
"It's all his fault. He's a lying, cheating bastard. He never deserved me in the first place."
The comments were brutal.
"Didn't this guy cheat on his mate? What was the other woman's name again? Aria?"
"Thank the Moon Goddess, she's about to complete her mating ceremony. Her new mate is ridiculously hot."
Even after years of being branded a homewrecker, I still went pale at the words.
Kael's expression darkened. He shot to his feet, his Alpha aura flaring as he pulled out his phone.
"Sable, have you lost your mind? Take that video down. Now!"
My eyes stung.
For three years, Kael had fought with Sable over the rumors she'd spread about me.
More than once, she'd clawed at him in a rage, leaving bloody scratches across his neck and shoulders. Every time, he'd come back to me promising to make things right.
This time, I meant to stand beside him. Face her together.
But at the corner of the packhouse, I stopped dead.
Kael stood in front of Sable, eyes bloodshot, voice shaking with fury.
"Who was that man in the video with you? Are you planning to take him as your mate?"
Sable slapped him across the face.
"Weren't you supposed to be completing your mating ceremony today? What right do you have to question me?"
Kael let out a weary sigh. "Feel better now?"
Their eyes met. Then, without another word, they pulled each other into a kiss.
Sable's nails raked down his neck. He hissed in pain.
"You always leave me covered in scratches."
She bit down on the side of his throat, right where his scent gland pulsed beneath the skin. "How does that compare to your mate?"
Kael let out a low, breathless groan. "You know the answer. Aria is just the one I'm settling for."
Pain seized my chest. The documents for our mating ceremony slipped from my hands and scattered across the floor.
So this was what the last three years had been.
I'd endured one humiliation after another, all so the two of them could keep feeding their endless obsession with each other.
If their love was a war neither of them could walk away from, I was done being the casualty.

I died the day I caught my fiancé cheating.

I had walked in on my cousin and my fiancé, completely naked in the backseat of a brand-new Porsche. It was a car bought with stolen money—embezzled from the estate of my recently deceased grandmother, Margaret.

Panic had set in the moment I discovered them. To stop me from calling the cops, he slammed his foot on the gas.

As a pool of warm blood spread beneath my head, I heard him lying to the first responders: "She’s mentally unstable. She threw herself right in front of the car."

I died exactly like that—labeled a hysterical, suicidal woman.

But just when I thought it was all over, my eyes snapped open.

The hot blood that had just blurred my vision, the shattering agony in my bones—it was all gone.

My husband Eric couldn't speak after a car accident three years ago. Three years of silence. Not one word.

To pay for his rehab, I worked four jobs at once—worked until I was coughing up blood, until I collapsed. Winter nights, Leo and I huddled under one threadbare blanket. When my son spiked a fever and I had no money for medicine, I stayed up all night pressing wet rags to his burning forehead.

Eric? His only communication was cold texts, ordering me around. When Leo reached for a hug, he'd push him away like our son didn't exist.

I endured it all. Because deep down, I believed the accident was my fault.

Until that night.

I was hauling equipment at Selena's concert—Selena, the pop star everyone knew—when a mystery guest in a mask stepped on stage. They sang together, voices blending like they'd done this a thousand times.

That voice. That lightning-shaped scar on his elbow.

My "mute" husband of three years.

I followed him backstage. Through the door, I heard Selena's laugh: "Congrats, Eric. Your mute act is almost over—you won the bet."

Three years of sacrifice.

All of it just a game. A bet with his first love.

He was the gentlest male nurse in the hospital, and it took him three years to fall in love with a woman of exceptional talent.

She was the most dazzling female director of the cardiothoracic surgery department, and she was used to his humble flattery and took his efforts for granted.

Three years of companionship couldn't outweigh a single word: "Get lost."

When he finally left, heartbroken, she realized—

The "little nurse" she used to dislike had long since become the most important person in her life.

Some loves, once lost, are lost forever.

Some missed opportunities are regrets that can never be undone.

I gave up MIT for them in my last life.
They paid me back by stealing my lab notes, framing me for misconduct, and choosing her over me when I drowned.
I watched them choose her over me a hundred times
Now I’m 17 again. I block all three and fly to MIT.
They think I’m throwing a tantrum.
Wait till they find out who saved them out of that cave—

In a modern city of flights, glass hotels, and surveillance footage, Nora—an artist still recovering from surgery—watches her marriage rot behind polished excuses. As she traces her husband’s affair through airport selfies, joint-account charges, voice recordings, and a staged fall on the stairs, humiliation hardens into precision. Cold, sharp, and deeply satisfying, this is a divorce reckoning lit by rain, evidence files, airport confrontations, and the moment a woman stops begging to be chosen.

My mate, Alpha Grant, ran a pack in western Washington. A witch had cursed his wolf the day he was born, and he could never pick out a she-wolf's scent well enough to know his true mate.
He spent five years hunting for her. Every dead end wore him down a little more, until he finally quit.
That was the moment he chose me.
On our bonding night, he told me the real reason.
"Mara," he said quietly, "I didn't have a choice. If the pack found out their Alpha couldn't even find his true mate, they'd see me as a joke. So I picked you. You're my chosen mate, but I swear no one will ever take your title. You're my Luna. Even if I find my true mate someday... nothing will change that."
Then he looked away and added, "I'm cursed, but I still have to look for her. I have to search every corner of the pack."

In the apocalyptic freeze, temperatures plummeted to seventy below zero. The earth was encased in ice, and ice beasts roamed everywhere.

I risked my life to scavenge for food, covered in wounds, enduring cold and hunger, leaving all our meager supplies for my parents and brother.

I thought blood was thicker than water, that all the suffering and hardship was worth it.

But I never imagined that when our resources ran out, the family I'd protected with my life would reveal their true beastly nature. They ambushed and knocked me unconscious, tied me to an ice pillar, planning to use me as food rations—to eat me alive.

At the moment of near death, the ice jade my grandfather left me suddenly shattered. I awakened top-tier ice abilities, commanding frost and snow, controlling the extreme cold.

My kindness had been frozen to death by the bitter cold. Family meant nothing.

Those who betrayed me, deceived me, and tried to eat me—I wouldn't spare a single one.

My name is Brianna, Luna of the Sapphire Pack.
I used to think Warren Crawford was the best husband and father in the world.
Until the night of the full moon. My six-year-old daughter, Lydia, was slapped in public by him and locked in a dungeon—all for taking a piece of apple tart.
He claimed locking her up was to save a life.
Three years ago, Beta Roman took a fatal blade for Warren, leaving behind his widow, Lorelei, and their daughter, Clarissa. Now Clarissa was diagnosed with bone cancer, and the only matching trial subject was my Lydia.
My own husband personally sent our daughter onto the operating table.
I knelt outside the operating room, bashing my forehead against the floor until I bled, but he dismissed it as me making a scene.
Covered in blood, I rushed into the VIP ward holding a dying Lydia, begging him to save her. Instead, he ordered his guards to throw us out into the cold street.
Lydia died in my arms. Her last words were: "Mommy, if I die, will Daddy like me just a little bit?"
I had no answer for her.
At that very moment, her father was sitting in a VIP ward, peeling grapes for another woman’s daughter.
I spent three days handling my daughter’s funeral alone.
When I pushed open the front door holding her urn, I was greeted by a sky filled with confetti and balloons. My husband was hosting a lavish birthday party for that woman’s child.

Love wasn't free in our family. It was literal currency.
My sister, Stella Belle, and I both had a Kinship Savings Jar. 
It held the love and care we received from our families, which could be traded for anything in the Life Exchange Shop.

When I was six, I bought my mom’s life back from cancer by selling away the pain of her carrying me for nine months.
When I was thirteen, I bought my brother a brand-new leg by trading away every memory of dad’s care and upbringing.
Now, at nineteen, my dad was in a terrible car crash. His body was shattered.
Our family came to the Life Exchange Shop once again. 
 
I nudged my younger sister, Stella, forward.
But mom grabbed her and yanked me to the front instead.
"You've never done anything for this family, yet we gave you so much love and care!"
"Now it's your turn to pay back what we gave you, and you're refusing?" She snapped. 
"Besides, everything in that jar came from us anyway. You're grown now. It's only right that you empty it to repay your parents!"
 
I was shoved against the counter.
Beside me, a girl who couldn't pull anything from her jar suddenly explodes like a firework. 
But Mom, I thought in terror, my jar is empty too......

When they shoved me into the flames, I fought through the blinding pain to call my brother, Ethan Bennett. Fire licked at my skin, twisting my vision, but the call finally went through.

"What is it now?" He sounded distracted, like he was checking off a guest list.

"Ethan, please, help—" My voice was shattered, choked by the searing heat.

"Can't you just give it a rest for one single day?" he snapped, cutting me off. "Selina and I are getting married this weekend. If you pull another stunt, I swear I'll—"

The call died right as the flames swallowed me whole.

Agony consumed every nerve before my eyes closed for good, his unfinished threat still echoing in my ears.

But the good news is, Ethan... you don't have to swear anymore. Because I was dead.

Tricked onto a wilderness survival reality show, I was forced to act as my fake sister’s backdrop to protect the elderly woman who raised me. My fake sister constantly staged tricks for clout, and my blood brother threatened me with fatal consequences to sweep the family’s skeletons under the rug. I stopped surrendering and uncovered scam after scam during the live broadcast. The Hart family sought to erase my past. Instead, I laid all their shameful secrets bare for the world to see.

I lived on peanut butter sandwiches for three months to buy my boyfriend the sneakers he wanted for Valentine’s Day.
Then I found them in a trash can.
While I waited alone at our dinner reservation, Cole was across town throwing a party for his “best bro,” Sienna. He fastened a sapphire necklace around her neck, laughed about the night his friends left me stranded on a mountain, and bet that I’d never leave him. After all, I was just a broke girl from Ohio, and he was the Whitmore heir.
For three years, I split every check to prove I wasn’t a gold digger. He sent me a Venmo request for my fever medicine, down to the cent.
Then he fired me in front of the whole office, and his bestie tripped me on my way out.
Cole thinks I’ll come crawling back. Sienna thinks she’s won.
They have no idea what I can do with one voice message and four witnesses.

I live twenty-four honest years, and fate hands me a terminal stomach cancer diagnosis as a reward. Less than a month left on the clock.

Right when I'm ready to flip off this godawful fate, the floor under me goes black, and I drop straight into an SSS-rank horror game.

The Midnight Bloodred Theater. Dried-out eyeballs for chandeliers, crusted blood for decoration.

The boss is some deranged silver-haired god with blood-red eyes, and he blows people into a bloody mist the second something doesn't go his way.

Everyone else is crying, begging for their lives.

Not me. I'm dying either way.

I walk right up onto that stage, plant my hand on his abs, and grin up at him.

"Hey, gorgeous. Before you kill me, how about a kiss?"

When the Manhattan morgue finally managed to reach my husband, Victor Hawthorne, he was in the penthouse suite, fucking another woman.
"Mr. Hawthorne, this is the city morgue. We need you to come down and identify your wife's remains."
"Identify what?" he snapped, his thrusts not missing a beat.
"Burn her," he ordered. "Don't bother me with her pathetic ploys."
He tossed the phone onto the nightstand, his focus entirely on the woman beneath him.
Then my body was pushed into the incinerator.
When I was nothing but ashes, the funeral home called him again.
Selena pouted, trailing a nail down his chest.
"Is Cecilia acting up again?"
"I'll go end this farce," Victor sneered, getting out of bed.

On my daughter’s 100-day celebration, I found explicit messages between my husband and his secretary.
During our fight, he “accidentally” pushed me off the second floor, trapping me in a wheelchair forever.
He fired the secretary and cared for me personally, winning everyone’s praise and pity.
Only I knew he took secret late-night calls, his eyes full of disgust when he looked at me.
Until his mistress moved in, and my daughter screamed at me: “Just die.”
I smiled and pulled out a hidden voice recorder from my wheelchair.
Three years of silence, all for this moment.
James, your karma has come.

When the car crashed, I took the brunt of the deadly, mangled steel for my brother, Damon, letting half of my face be sheared off and my spine destroyed.

When I woke up in the intensive care unit, he mercilessly tossed an Engagement Termination Agreement onto my hospital bed.

"You're disfigured now, practically a paralyzed cripple. Give Julian up to Lily."

"She's beautiful, healthy, and she's always been in love with him. Having her take your place at the wedding is the best option right now."

The hospital room door wasn't fully closed. I could clearly hear him and our adopted sister, Lily, whispering out in the hallway.

"Damon, you deliberately caused that crash just so I could replace her in the marriage alliance. What if she finds out?"

Damon's tone was indifferent. "She grew up stealing the spotlight as the family heir. Giving Julian to you is the least she can do. Once she signs the papers, I'll put her in the best private nursing home. Consider it compensation."

I bit down hard on my cracked lips. Tears smashed against the deep, bone-exposing lacerations on my face, burning so intensely it made me want to carve the flesh right off.

Lily's sweet voice drifted in: "I'll make sure to compensate her in the future, too."

But Damon, even if I don't sign, you'll both get exactly what you want very soon.

Because the doctor just told me that my body has gone into multiple organ failure due to the severe trauma. I only have a few days left to live.